Rainbows End
Page 22
Miri slid off her bike and stood beside him. She was looking into the car. Robert glanced at the departing vehicle. He could see Sharif still sitting in the back seat; maybe she could too. “That’s Zulfikar Sharif,” Robert said, rushing into explanations like the guilty soul he was. “He’s interviewing me about the old days.”
“Oh,” she seemed to lose interest.
“Hey, Miri, I didn’t know you had a bike.”
She walked the bike along beside him. “Yes,” she replied seriously. “It’s not good for transportation, but Alice says that I need exercise. I like to ride around Fallbrook and game out the latest realities.”
Thanks to the miracle of Epiphany, Robert could guess what she was talking about.
“In fact, it’s not really my bike. This is Bob’s, from when he was younger than I am.”
The tires looked new, but—his eyes traveled over the aluminum frame, the peeling green and yellow paint job. Lord. Lena had insisted they buy this bike for the boy. Memories of little Bobby came back, of when he was trying so hard to learn to ride. He had been such a nuisance.
They walked the rest of the way to the door in silence, Robert lagging a bit behind his granddaughter.
16
THE FRONT BATHROOM INCIDENT
Winston Blount called a couple of times during the next few days. His cabal was very anxious to talk further about “what we talked about.” Robert put him off and refused to talk privately. He could almost hear Winnie’s teeth grinding in frustration—but the guy gave him another week.
Robert had several more interviews with the real—well, he could hope it was the real—Sharif. They were a heartwarming reminder of the Good Years, and totally unlike his encounters with the Mysterious Stranger. The young grad student gushed semi-intelligent enthusiasm, except that sometimes he seemed fond of science fiction. Sometimes. When Robert mentioned this, Sharif looked stricken. Ah. The Mysterious Stranger strikes again. Or maybe there were three…entities…animating the image of Zulfikar Sharif. Robert began to track each word, each nuance.
Juan Orozco’s compositions had blossomed. He could write complete sentences intentionally. The boy seemed to think that this made Robert Gu a genius of a teacher. Yes, and someday soon there will be chimpanzees who look up to me. But that thought did not escape Robert’s lips. Juan Orozco was working to his limits. He was doomed to mediocrity, much as Robert himself, and spreading the pain of such knowledge was not appealing anymore.
The Mysterious Stranger stayed out of sight. Maybe he thought Robert’s own need was the best salesman. The bastard. Robert returned again and again to the references the Stranger had given him. They described three medical miracles of the last ten months. One was an effective treatment for malaria. That was not such a big deal, since cheaper cures had existed for years. But the other two breakthroughs related to mood and intellectual disorders. They were not examples of Reed Weber’s random “heavenly minefield.” Both had been commissioned by the customers they cured.
So what? Miracles happened in this modern age. What proof was there the Stranger could create them? He pulled up the documents the Stranger had given him. Their visual representation was as medieval letters of credit, envelopes sealed with wax. If one broke the metaphor, it was easy to look inside and see the lower layers, a few megabytes of encryption. Useless nonsense. But if you followed the metaphor from the top, then you found pointers to magic tools to employ the certificates, and other pointers to the technical papers that explained what these tools actually did with the underlying data.
For three days now, Robert had been digging through those papers. The old Robert would not have had the intellect for this. God had taken away his true and unique genius, and perversely given him this analytical talent in return. Playing with protocols was fun. Okay, another couple of days and he would put it all together—and call the Stranger’s bluff.
Meantime, he was falling further behind in his work with Juan for Chumlig’s composition class.
“Will you have time to work on my graphics suggestions?” Juan asked one afternoon. “Before tomorrow, I mean.” That was when their current weekly project was due.
“Yes, sure.” The kid had been great about working to Robert’s directions. He felt a sliver of shame for not reciprocating. “I mean, I’ll try. I’ve got this problem with some outside things…”
“Oh, what? Can I help?”
Lord. “Some security documents. They’re supposed to prove that a, um, friend of mine was really involved in solving a…game problem.” He made one of them visible to Juan.
The kid looked at the wax and gilt and parchment. “Oh! A creditat. I’ve seen certs like that. You—oops, yours has an outer envelope so only you can do all the steps, but see—” He grabbed the certificate and pointed where Robert should do what. “—you gotta apply your own stamp first, and then you tear along the server line and you’ll see a release like this.” Phantom transformations spread in the air around him. “And if this friend of yours is not blowing smoke, you’ll see bright green here and there’ll be a written description of his contribution, backed by Microsoft or Bank of America or whoever.”
Then Juan had to go help his mother. As he faded away, Robert studied the examples. He recognized some of the steps from the protocol descriptions, but, “How did you know all that?”
Foolish question. The boy looked a little startled. “It’s just—it’s just kind of intuitive, you know? I think that’s the way the interface is designed.” And then he was completely gone.
No one was home right now, so Robert went downstairs and fixed himself a snack. Then he played back the steps the boy had shown him. He had no excuse for further delay. He hesitated a moment more…then applied the steps to each of the “creditats.”
Bright green. Bright green. Bright green.
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER didn’t like to come visiting when Robert was indoors at home. Maybe the USMC was not as incompetent as the Stranger claimed. Robert began to look forward to his time away from home with anticipation and dread. Very soon he must decide. Was betrayal a price he could pay for a chance to be his old self once more?
Days passed. Still no contact. The Stranger wants me ripe for the picking.
When it finally happened, Robert was walking around the neighborhood, doing another interview with Zulfikar Sharif. The young man hesitated in the middle of a question and looked at him.
Miri --> Juan:
Juan --> Miri:
Miri --> Juan:
Sharif’s earnest features took on the sly, greenish cast of the Mysterious Stranger. “How is it going, my man?”
Robert managed a cool response. “Well enough.”
The Stranger smiled. “You look a bit peaked, Professor. Perhaps you’d be more comfortable sitting down.” A car slid to a stop beside them. The door opened and the phantom graciously waved Robert inside.
“This is more secure?” Robert said as they pulled away from the curb.
“This car is. Remember, I have powers far greater than your little friends.” He settled in the back-facing seat. “So. Have you convinced yourself that I can help you?”
“Maybe you can,” said Robert, a little bit proud of how level his voice sounded. “I checked your creditats. You don’t seem to know anything about anything, but you have this knack for bringing the right people together and being around when those people solve serious problems.”
The Stranger waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t know anything about anything? You are naive, Professor. Our world is overflowing with technical expertise. Knowledge is piled metaphorical light-years deep. Given that, the truly golden skill is the one I possess—to bring together the knowledge and abilities that make solutions. Your Ms. Chumlig understands that. Schoolkids certainly understand. Even Tommie Parker understands, though he has one important detail backwards. In me,” another elaborate gesture, his hand flattening against his turtleneck shirt,
“in me, you have the far extreme of this ability. I am world-class at ‘bringing-together-to-get-answers.’”
And with an ego to match. How does he get his way when he’s dealing with the Einsteins and Hawkings of this era? Surely he doesn’t have everyone by the short hairs?
The Stranger leaned forward. “But enough of me. Winnie Blount and his ‘Elder Cabal’ are getting desperate. I’m not exactly desperate, but if you delay more than another few days, I cannot guarantee an acceptable outcome. So. Are you onboard or not?”
“I—Yes. I am.” Twenty years ago, betraying Bob would not have bothered him. After all, the idiot was an ingrate. Now, no glib excuse rose to mind, but…I’ll do anything to recover what I lost. “What is this biometric information you want on Alice?”
“Some sonograms we can’t take in public. A microgram blood spot.” The Mysterious Stranger pointed at a small box that lay on the seat between them. “Take a look.”
Robert reached down…and his fingers touched something hard and cool. The box was real. That was a first for the Mysterious Stranger. He took a closer look. It was gray plastic without any openings or even virtual labels. Wait, there was the ubiquitous “no user-serviceable parts within.”
“So?”
“So, leave that in your front bathroom this evening. It will do the rest.”
“I won’t do anything to hurt Alice.”
The Stranger laughed. “Such paranoia. The point of all this is to pass unnoticed. Alice Gu is in public places several times a week. If ill were wished her, those would be the opportunities to take advantage of. But you and the cabal just need biometrics…Any other questions?”
“Not just now.” Robert slipped the gray plastic box into his pocket. “I just can’t imagine that twenty-first-century military security can be duped by something as simple as a drop of blood and some sonograms.”
The Stranger laughed. “Oh, there’s much more to it than that. Tommie Parker thinks he’s covering the angles, but without my help you four would not even get into the steam tunnels.” He looked at Robert’s stiff expression and laughed again. “Think of your part as being the user interface.” He gave a little bow. “And I am the user.”
ROBERT MADE A point of taking the Stranger’s gadget through the front hallway bug trap. The small box triggered no alarms he could see. So betrayal was as simple as walking into the first-floor bathroom and setting the box down among the bags and aerosols and squeeze tubes that were already piled on the side counter. Modern bed and bath products were a bastion of old-style physical advertising. After all, even the most modern folks had to take off their clothes and their contacts somewhere. But Alice and Bob had no style. They bought the cheapest commodity products they could find. The devil box fit right in.
Robert took a long shower. It would be nice to feel clean. He heard no strange sounds, saw nothing strange through the frosted glass. But when he came out of the shower, he noticed that there was no mysterious gray box either. Even when he pawed around the counter, touching every object there—there was no sign of the intrusion. The bathroom door had been shut the whole time.
Someone knocked on the door, happily following the family rules about not snooping through bathroom walls. “Robert, are you okay?” It was Miri. “Alice says it’s dinnertime.”
DINNER WAS A nightmare.
It was always tense when the four of them ate together. Usually, Robert could avoid such get-togethers, but Alice seemed determined to see him with the whole family at least once a week. Robert knew what she was up to. She was recalibrating, deciding if now she could lower the boom on her father-in-law.
Tonight she was steelier than ever, and it didn’t help that Robert had serious things to hide. Maybe she had some special reason to be suspicious. He noticed that Bob and Miri were doing all the running back and forth to the kitchen. Usually Alice helped with that. Tonight she sat herself down in her usual place, and grilled Robert in her merciless, casual way: how was school going, what about the project with Juan. She even asked about his “old friends,” for God’s sake! And Robert explained and smiled and prayed he was passing the test. The old Robert never had trouble stringing people along!
Then Bob and Miri were sitting down to eat. Alice shifted her attention from her villainous father-in-law. She chatted with Miri in the same friendly, interested tones she had used with Robert. Miri replied with precision, a detailed summary of just who and what was good and bad at school.
For a while Robert almost relaxed. After all, they were here to eat. Surely that couldn’t give him away.
But something was up, and it wasn’t just his imagination. Bob and Alice got into a discussion of San Diego politics, a school-bond issue. But there was an edgy undercurrent; some couples really argue politics, but this was the first time Robert had ever heard that from these two. And every so often Alice’s clothing flickered. Around the house in the real world, Alice Gu wore a dumpy hausfrau dress that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1950s. When she flickered, it was virtual imagery, nothing like Carlos’s old-fashioned smart T-shirts. The first time it happened, Robert almost didn’t notice—partly because neither Bob nor Miri reacted. Half a minute later—as Alice gestured emphatically about some outstandingly trivial election issue—there was another flicker. For an instant she was dressed in something like naval whites, but the collar insignia said ‘PHS.’ PHS? There were lots of different Google hits on the abbreviation. A minute or two passed, and she was briefly a USMC full colonel. That, Robert had seen before, since it was her true rank.
Bob said mildly, “You’re emoting, dear.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Alice said curtly. “You know that. The point is”—and she continued chewing on the school-bond issue. But her gaze wandered around the room, eventually riveting on Robert. It was not a friendly gaze, and even though her words were unrelated to Robert Gu there was a sharpness in her voice. Then, for almost two seconds, she was wearing a civilian business suit with an old-fashioned ID lanyard. The ID bore a familiar seal and the letters DHS. Robert knew what that meant. It was all he could do not to flinch back. She can’t know everything! He wondered if Alice and Bob were silently coordinating all the scary signs, conspiring to panic him into confession. Somehow, he didn’t think Bob was that adept.
So Robert just nodded and glanced casually around. Miri had been quieter than usual. She was staring off into the distance, and looked as bored as a thirteen-year-old can look when she’s trapped at home with her parents rattling on about Things Not Important. But this was Miri Gu, and this was not the twentieth century. Most likely she was surfing, though usually she disguised such absences when she was at the dinner table.
Alice slapped the table, and Robert’s eyes jerked back to her. She was glaring at him. “Don’t you agree, Robert?”
Even Louise Chumlig couldn’t glare more aggressively than that.
“Sorry. My mind wandered, Alice.”
She waved her hand abruptly. “It doesn’t matter.”
And then golden letters spread silently across the air. Miri --> Robert:
Miri was still gazing into nowhere. Her hands were in plain sight and motionless. She was that good with her clothes. Okay, but what in hell is going on here? That was the message he wanted to send back, but short of finger tapping, the best he could do was give her a quizzical look.
Alice rattled on, interrupted occasionally by Bob, but now Robert was not living in stark terror. He waited another three or four minutes, and then excused himself.
Bob looked a little relieved. “We don’t have to talk so much about the bond issue, Robert. There are other—”
“No, that’s okay. I’m the fellow with homework these days.” Robert pasted on a smile and retreated up the stairs. He felt Alice’s rifled gaze following him every step. If not for Miri’s silent message, he would have run up the stairs.
And so far, Alice hadn’t ventured near the front bathroom.
&
nbsp; HE DID HAVE homework. Juan came over and distracted him for almost half an hour with his explanations of immersive outlines. Robert was supposed to have such an outline ready for tomorrow’s progress report in Chumlig’s class. Juan went away pleased. So was Robert; he had made up for several days of inattention. He fooled around with Juan’s templates till he could implement everything. By God, we should be getting an A for cross-support. The kid’s prose had become almost serviceable—and this immersive he had constructed, it was beautiful. He was aware of Miri helping to clean up after dinner and then coming up to her room. Bob and Alice were just sitting in the living room. He set an activity alarm on the first floor, and for a while he forgot himself in the making of more and better refinements to his graphics.
Lord! An hour had passed! He took a quick glance downstairs. Nobody had been to the front john. There was a pending message from Tommie Parker. The cabal wanted to know when or if he was going to come through with his contribution.
He looked downstairs again. Strange. He couldn’t see into the living room anymore. Normally that was on the house menu, but now it was as private as the bedrooms. He stood and walked over to the door, quietly eased it open half an inch, snooping the good old-fashioned way.
They were arguing! And Bob was white-hot. His voice grew louder and louder, finally breaking into enraged shouting. “I don’t give a fuck if they do need you! It’s always just one more time. But this time you’ve—”
Bob hesitated in midflame. Robert leaned forward, ear to the door. Nothing. Not even the mumble of circumspect speech. Son and daughter-in-law had taken their spat into ethereal realms. But Robert continued to listen. He could hear the two moving around. At one point, there was the sound of a hand slapping down like a pistol shot. Alice whacking the dinner table? There was half a minute of silence and then a door slammed.